Monday, August 13, 2007

Monday 08/13 A.M. Quickie:Tiger, Ankiel, Jenks, Vick, Pac-Man, More!

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Just as I was the first to declare that one week in July the "Worst Week in Sports History," let me be the first to declare that happy days are here again. The brutal sports news of last month is long-forgotten:

Old (bad) news: Tim Donaghy, Michael Vick and Barry Bonds. New (good) news: Rick Ankiel, Bobby Jenks and Tiger Woods. (And did I mention that your fantasy football draft is just around the corner?) Yes, there's still Vick and Pac-Man news to talk about today, but there's finally a lot of provocatively good to counter-balance the provocatively bad.

Tiger wins PGA Championship (13th Major title for Woods): So much for this being the year of the No-Name Major Winners. Tiger affirms that it's not a year in golf without a Tiger Major.

(Nicklaus leads Woods in career Majors by 5. What's the over-under on when Tiger breaks that? I'll start the bidding at 2009 for those of you ultra-bullish on Tiger, but won't go any later than 2010.

MLB Stud: Bobby Jenks, who set down his 41st consecutive batter, tying the MLB record. This is a damn impressive streak (and history in the making), friends. I'd qualify this as well worth a live cut-in.

Ankiel Watch: MLB's most endearing story of the season continued this weekend, with Ankiel clubbing his 2nd and 3rd HR of the season on Saturday (that's since Thursday, mind you).

One more MLB Stud: Magglio Ordonez, who became the second Tiger to ever hit two HR in the same inning.

MLB Dud: Eric Gagne. Has done more harm than good since coming over to the Red Sox. It's only August 13 and the Yankees are only 4 games behind in the AL East. Forget the Wild Card: With so many games to play, New York could actually overtake Boston for the division title.

Vick Watch: (Can't be avoided) Yahoo is reporting that it's looking like Vick will be suspended for the entire season. Presumably, Roger Goodell will simply use the league's "Personal Conduct Policy" plus Vick's claim to the league that he wasn't involved in dog-fighting to boot him out for the year. (The NFL denies the report.)

Pac-Man Jones Watch: (Again, can't be avoided). He showed up on his TNA show, but used a little rasslin-style theater to sidestep actually joining the acting troupe. After an off-screen "incident," he was "injured," thus allowing himself to "participate" in TNA without actually "participating."

NFL Weekend Stud: Kellen Clemens. After his 16/22 for 174 yards and 3 TDs, how soon before Jets fans are calling for Clemens to replace Chad Pennington sooner rather than later?

NFL Weekend Dud: OK, so about Matt Schaub... The new Texans QB went 3/5 for 5 yards in his Houston debut. Eek. (Meanwhile, the Titans benched Vince Young in one of those "well, it's only preseason" moments.)

Rebuttal from reader Evan:

You're killing me man. Don't go for the easy dud. Schaub's numbers don'ttell 1/4 of the story. He only missed on 1 throw to a wide-open KevinWalters down the sidelines. The other incompletion was actually his bestthrow. With a blitz coming from either side he stepped up in the pocket(something Carr NEVER did) and delivered a perfect pass to walters - whodropped it. He is the polar opposite of a dud.

Alexander-Tomlinson didn't really happen last night, nor would any reasonable fan have expected it to. LT didn't even play, and Alexander barely did. And we fantasy football owners wouldn't want it any other way.

NFL Monday: Ravens-Eagles and Broncos-49ers. Mostly, I just want to see how Ron Jaworski and Tony Kornheiser mesh. Of course they'll be better than TK and Theismann. But can Jaws help Tony raise (or even FIND) his game?

CFB Preseason: Bad news for Pitt and Dave Wannstedt. Derek Kinder, Pitt's fantastic WR, is out for the season after a knee injury.

Is Darren McFadden entering the NFL Draft after the 2007 season? Well, considering that he's the best player in college football this season and the most gifted running back to enter the NFL since LaDainian Tomlinson, I'd say that he probably should. (Put it this way: Had he been allowed to enter the NFL Draft after his sophomore year, he would have been the first RB taken and arguably the No. 1 overall pick.)

Fantasy Football: With Thomas Jones' injury, picking up Leon Washington late suddenly doesn't seem like such a stretch anymore, does it?

77 comments:

The fact that McFadden's MOTHER is the one breaking news... this generation of kids coming up is just totally helpless isn't it? I"m guessing his mom will handle his retirement announcement in 12 years too.

Saw a graphic yesterday of the Yankees batting avgs since the all star break. Everyone except A-Rod (.252) is batting over .300, Cano has been unreal clip of .427. Now is this a telling stat? The Yanks games are now intense and in contention, so A-Rod is wilting?

Arod still has 28 rbi's in only 30 games since the all star break, so he's not exactly wilting. You could make the case that now that everybody around him is hitting there is significantly less pressure on him to perform.

Just for the hell of it, I looked up the odds on the PGA Championship after the third round was over Saturday night.

Tiger Woods was a (-2000 - 1/20 odds) favorite to win the event. The Field was (+700 - 7/1 odds).

Meaning, if you bet $100 on Tiger after the third round, you'd make a cool $5 profit after Sunday.

In fact, the sportsbook I looked at even had individual player odds for about 20 players to finish second. How many other sports give you the opportunity to predict which team/player will come up just short?

For the record, Ernie Els was the 4/1 favorite, with Woody Austin at 15/2 (7.5/1).

no one cares about that loser except for will leitch and the rest of the cardinals ugly fat fan base. rob neyer pointed out that there is little precedent for pitchers turning into position players and being sucesseful, great, otherwise it is no bigger deal than anyone else getting a late season call up. and its WAY more interesting that the cardinals organization may have only done it as a cynical way to cover up spezio's drug problem and the rest of their organziation's rampant, endemic substance abuse problems.

please do start follow deadspin's stupid example of trying to make othert people care about some pathetic failure.

it seemed to me that the yanks did pretty good in their first test against a .500 team...even if they wont admit it red sox nation is in panic mode. It would be pretty embarressing to blow a double digit lead...again

There is no team better in baseball right now than the yankees. Starting pitching has tightened up, they are hitting at an unprecedented level, and the bullpen finally looks sharp. Next week or so will be a good test.

Alright, let me try and put this in a somewhat rational way (hard for a biased Red Sox or Yankees fan)...

While I don't think I was ever on record as saying the Yankees were completely out of it, I did think it was pretty unlikely, given that even if the Red Sox would play even .500 ball, the Yankees would need to have played about ~.650 ball in order to catch them. The way both teams seemed constructed, that seemed unlikely, right?

Well now that the Yankees are playing ~.700 ball as of late, I think it's honestly less about a Red Sox collapse than an amazing Yankees surge. The only thing that somewhat lessens the Yankees surge in my eyes is that during this streak they've been extraordinarily lucky in missing a lot of team's aces.

Aside from Roy Halladay (L) and Fausto Carmona (W), they've missed CC when playing the Indians, Bannister (twice) when playing the Royals, Buerhle with the White Sox, Bedard with the Orioles, and Kazmir with the D-Rays. Not to mention Hafner's injury this weekend, etc. Obviously, these things happen, and they've still won these games, but it's something to consider IF people start gauging how the Yankees would do in the playoffs.

Still, right now I wouldn't want to face either the Yankees or the Mariners (the less heralded wild-card leading team in the AL).

Second that Peralta DUD. I think he is as stupid as Manny Ramirez. Last year's excuse was he couldn't wear his contacts so he wasn't seeing the ball and couldn't hit for crap. Now he got laser surgery, but what's his excuse for yesterday!? Geez.

Anyone who has the Indians left on their schedule must be thrilled. They get the Major Team Dud from me.

wow...it's not the greatest comeback/feel-good story in the history of baseball, but it's still something positive in perhaps the worst summer in sports history. if your shocked that a blog like deadspin (or any other blog) shows some personal bias, you'll probably also be surprised that the Pope is Catholic and bears in fact crap in the woods.

Is it suspect the Cards gloss over Spezio's problems...sure, but that team (and especially that city) need a good story to distract them from a terrible season

Didn't you say that the Yankees would falter this weekend now that they're playing a "good" team and the Red Sox would solidify their lead? I can go find your exact quote if you like...But keep believing the Red Sox will hold off the Yankees. At this point, I wouldn't bet against the Red Sox missing the playoffs altogether and the Mariners and Yankees making it. Though I wouldn't bet for it either.

Ankiel was headed out of baseball in 2005. His confidence shot, his talent gone -- he just lost everything, with no explanation. The fact that he reinvented himself as an outfielder and has emerged as a contributor at the ML level is a great story.

Josh Hamilton's story is also great, and more so because he overcame more and has been doing so since Opening Day.

First things first, I agree with just about everything Todd said up above me here. Aside from one thing:

I'm terrified that the Sox might not just cough up the division, but miss the playoffs.

Now, I don't remember ever going on the record saying that the AL East was a done deal (though I can't be held responsible for things said/typed after alcohol was involved), and in fact I remember many times saying that they had as good a shot at the Wild Card as any other team.

The problem with the Sox is there's no sense of urgency around this team. Or at least it seems that way to me. The bats aren't coming through (Look at the stats for Manny and Ortiz from '06 as opposed to the '07 projections), the signing of JD Drew (and to a lesser extent, Julio Lugo) was a complete failure (gee, nobody saw that coming), and although they went out and got Gagne at the deadline, another bullpen arm was not what they needed. They had the best 'pen in the bigs - they needed a bat, and didn't get one.

The pitching is fantastic. The bullpen - save for one guy over the past week - is fine.

Jonathan, both the Yankees and the Red Sox '07 versions are so different from last year's that I CAN actually block out the 5 game disaster from last year. I could also ask you if you remember the 3-game sweep at Fenway earlier this year with the back-to-back-to-back-to-back. Neither is all that relevant to the here and now, right?

Also, more importantly, the Red Sox are still in the lead for the division for now, whereas prior to the 5 game sweep for the Yankees last year, the Red Sox were still behind the Yankees.

Look, I won't be as bold as CMfost is saying I'm not at all worried. I'm concerned, but I really don't think there's any reason to panic yet. Do I feel as confident as I did even two weeks ago? Of course not, but I can actually somewhat look at this rationally in that if the Yankees can continue to play .700 ball, then there's really just not a hell of a lot the Red Sox can do anyway.

Alright, the way I see it, Josh Hamilton is a better comeback story, since he was basically left for dead (almost literally) only a few years ago. While Ankiel's story is impressive and inspiring, Hamilton's comeback was definitely more against the odds. It's great to see both guys having even the success that they've had in limited time.

Hey now even some Cubs fans can root for Rick Ankiel. This is most definitely a feel good story and I've been rooting for the kid to get back since his problems on the mound. I just want to see what Peter Gammons has to say (I've followed Ankiel's progress through Peter)

As a cubs fan I'm happy he's contributing to a major league team again

great point. i hate everything boston, but even i can admit what lester has done is very inspirational.

lester's problems were sad and hit close to home with a lot of people. cancer is connected with so many people across the world. his comeback cannot be looked down upon one bit.

hamilton's problems were also sad, but to a lot of people, he was probably not looked too highly upon. one thing the general public does not like is drug abuse. his comeback is inspirational to some. he now is a messenger for god...or so he states. but to a lot of people, he will always be a drug abuser.

ankiel's problems were just hilarious. i wish i could go back in time. sorry...i can't help it! it was hilarious! who cares about his comeback? no one but st. louis fans.

its nice that ankiel is back in the majors but he wont be there long and seriously, no one cares but cardinals fans. every player getting called up to the majors has an interesting story. whats great about ankiel? that he hilariously sucked in the playoffs a few year ago? anyone care what chuck knobloch or macky sasser are doing these days? its bad enough we have all that cardinals garbage crammed down our throats on deadspin, i dont need to read it hear too. whats next, reciprocal Flordia knob schlobbing at deadspin? and f the cubs, they suck too. lester and hamilton are legit stories, ankiel is just a soon to be 2 time loser with a gay fan club.

I can't understand why anybody would dislike or have anything at all bad to say about Rick Ankiel.

The guy completely resurrected his career. No player in the history of baseball has ever done anything like this. They asked Eric Young, a former 2nd baseman on Baseball Tonight, if when his career ended because he wasn't quite MLB material anymore if he ever thought of trying to make it as a pitcher.

He laughed and said that not only had he ever thought of it, he thought that it was a crazy question to ask because nobody is talented enough to pull that off.

Josh Hamilton hadn't swung a bat in THREE years!!! he hadn't faced major league pitching in FIVE years!!! you are a moron if you think that ankiel's athletic ability is better than hamilton's. what's harder to come back from? not being able to throw to a catcher or overdosing on cocaine and heroin? hmmm....

there are plenty of athletes playing baseball that could have been either pithcers or position players, they just picked whatever position they thot would provide them the fastest route to the majors. troy percival was a catcher in the minors. also ankiel is not going to succeed in the majors. he has power to hit home runs as a 28 year old in AAA but he also strikes out a ton and doesnt walk. picthers will figure him out in a month. he is a scrub, plain and simple.

There are actually a bevy of good players who have made the switch from position player to pitcher in the minor leagues. Trevor Hoffman is an obvious one there.

Going the other way, as Ankiel has done, is less common.

As per Ankiel though, I wonder how much use he'll really be, since he seems to me to be more or less a clone of Chris Duncan. Above average power, but nothing more than a platoon player who can't really hit lefties that well and strikes out too much as a whole. We'll see how Ankiel can adjust, but I doubt he'll see much playing time against lefties.

sparty it is hard to make any judgements of the first week of exhibitions games since the starters only play a series or 2. You can better tell how a team is after the 3rd pre season game since they normally play 3+ quarter in that game

As a Yankee fan, I will chime in here. I never expected the Yanks to get within 4 games of the Red Sox. Still, I think that if you take into consideration the remaining schedule for the Yanks and Red Sox, the Sox will comfortably win the division. Of course it would be 1978 all over again if the Yanks won the division.

I think the Yankees will outplay the Mariners and Det/Clev loser to get the Wild Card. The Mariners will make it very close and come down to the wire.

I love the Ankiel story. Physically, Josh Hamilton's comeback may be tougher but he caused his own problems. I am glad he has recovered but he is the one who put himself in the ditch to begin with.

@ ken dynamodid ankiel do something to you personally? I mean come on.

people are focusing on ankiel more because they can always show that footage of his breakdown and go "gee, look how far he's come" they can't show a video of josh hamilton with a needle in his arm. let people like will have their man-crush. i'm not saying one comeback is in anyway better than the other, there completely different circumstances. if you're tired of hearing about ankiel, then don't read the stories.

I can't really understand A-Rod. The better he does, the worse the Yankees do. When the Yankees were playing terribly, he was tearing up the league. Now that the Yanks are streaking he is putting up good but not great numbers.

thank you cycledan, you responded to my comment about arod the way i expected someone too. ever since they got hot, he has not hit as well. not saying terrible, but definitely not as well as the rest of the season.

NY Jets fans won't call for Clemens to replace Pennington until the team starts losing. NY/NJ fans are smart enough to know they won 10 games with the guy last year and this is just preseason.

Mangini has a lot to prove this year. Was last year's resurgence just due to first year good luck in having a lot of injured players come back or is he starting a dynasty?

I still wonder how the disgruntled Pete Kendall situation will work out. They are not going to trade him unless they get good value. He is basically screwed. He can't sit out the season. He also can't sandbag it since he needs to prove he is worth more money to his next team.

Players have no leverage. If they don't renegotiate a contract to take less, they get cut. If they are under contract, teams have no real reason to renegotiate up. The only time to do that is for a young up and coming player who they can lock in under market value.

CycleDan, it's a team sport, when they needed Arod the most he played awesome, but he was the only one producing back then, now that the whole team is playing well and they are winning they don't need him to be as good as he was in the 1st half. I think they team as a whole is playing so much better and that's why they are winning, but people just want to turn it into a negative thing about Arod.

I realize Pennington has been hurt, but why are people always down on him? I've always thought he was a very heads-up QB. As evidence, sometime during the middle of last season was his first interception in the redzone ... OF HIS CAREER!! As a coach, I'd take Pennington over most of the schleps in the league.

I've got a different take on Arod (I'm sure others have made the same point). Perhaps the reason he is awe-inspiringly good on lousy teams is that he realizes the rest of the team around him is not good enough to win games, so he feels like he has to carry them on his own (see: Rangers, early '07 Yankees).

But when the rest of the team is performing at a high level, he can kind of slow down a little bit and let everyone else take the reigns.

Of course, this doesn't explain his innate ability to come up with a "clutch" 3-run homer when his team is already up 10...

Sparty, at the rate Arod was going there was going to have to be some periods where he cools off,.

Arod's BA and rbi's by month

April .355 34May .235 11June .402 34July .206 24August .324 11

See a pattern here, he goes up and down. July was a down month for him, as was June. In Agust he's hitting .324 with 11 rbi's in 11 games. So what's the conclusion players have bad months!!! Holy shit!!!

Jonathon, I didn't mean to sound like I was jumping on A-Rod, who wouldn't love to have him on their team. It is just probably coincidental that his performance seems inversely proportional to the performance of the team as a whole. Just kind of funny though.

Thanks Big D, Arod is the only player that get's shit for hitting home runs when the game isn't that close. It's pretty ridiculous and I think the only reason why is because he hits so many homers that a lot of them are going to come at times when the game isn't on the line.

well i guess you have show me jonathon. but if the yanks get to october, all the stats you just brought up are going to mean nothing unless he produces then. And yes it is fair, because he is going to be held to the standard of all Yankee greats that produced in the real clutch, Mantle, Ruth, DiMaggio, Gerhig, Jackson...If you are the best, you will be compared to the best.

The question isn't about guys that could do both and then changed their mind on which to do, it's about a guy who could only do one and then learned to do the other.

revscott-

As for the Hamilton comparison, is it harder to pick up something you used to do or learn something completely new? Hadn't swung a bat in three years? Ankiel had never tried to be a hitter!

chipp-

Fielder to pitcher happens all the time. Every year in the minors they have a couple guys who throw hard and they put them on the mound and turn them into a pitcher. Ankiel is way different.

And no, Babe Ruth isn't a good example. Babe was both a hitter and pitcher and then focussed on being a hitter. It's not like when he was a pitcher he wasn't a hitter. And even if Ruth was a good example, THEN YOU ARE DISSING A GUY WHO IS BEING COMPARED TO BABE EFFING RUTH!

i am a mets fan but what difference does it make? find me a non cardnials fans who care about ankiel? or people that havent been influenced by leitch's retarded man crush? (another awful ankiel post replete with fat ugly cardinal fans and delapidated downtown st louis on there today, by the way.) once the guy bombs out of the majors again we can all forget about him. until then i have to suffer thru this crap. also ankiel is not 'learning' how to hit for the first time in his life. he forgoe a scholarship to play every day in college to be a pitching prospect in the cardinals farm. he is not that special. he is just getting a lot of pub becasue the guy who writes the most popular sports blog on the internet wants to personally polish his dome piece.

i dunno - i try to remember as little about ankiel as possible. and anyway, just cause he was a sick picther in high school doesnt mean he also wasnt a sick hitter (nearly all HS prospects are) and im sure he got scholarship offers whether he got drafted or not. you ahve not proved that ankiel did not know how to hit before and during his pitching career in the pros. all youve proved is that you also have this bizzare man love for a pathetic cardinal loser and that i too have spent way to much time discussing a pathetic loser, so now we both look bad. thanks a lot.

"Lester's comeback is inspiring, however he sucks, and he wasn't good last year either."

REALLY Jonny Boy? Lester was 7-2 last year, and his ERA didn't start to inflate until he started getting back pains due to....CANCER! 5-0 with a 2.38 on July 18th 2006, and then the trouble began. Due some friggin research before you make your silly claims chump.

Last year Lester was 7-2 with a 4.76 era, lots of guys are good their first couple of starts before hitters start to get a good look at them. My point is that in 19 career starts he has a 5.10 era. It's nice that he beat cancer, but he hasn't really been a good pitcher.

Who cares if Vick is suspended for this season? There are new updates that the 2 other co-defendants are taking plea bargain deals now ... meaning he'll be the only guy left. And SportsCenter also says if he doesn't do a plea bargain deal, he could also be charged with racketeering. I know you're innocent until proven guilty, but um, holy shit. How serious is this gonna be?

... and Phil Hughes has a 4.64 ERA, so I'm guessing he's not a very good pitcher either? No, that would be a stupid statement to make.

Look, Lester's still really young (23 I believe). It's way, way too early in his career to pass judgment on how much big league success he'll have in his future, especially as he's coming off of cancer.

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DanShanoff.com is a sports-blog spin-off of my long-time ESPN.com column, "The Daily Quickie." Anchored by an early-morning post of must-know topics, the blog is updated frequently throughout the day with new posts and user comments.